The Failure of Human Rights Watch in Venezuela and Haiti

The Venezuela section of the report said nothing about ongoing attempts by the U.S. to overthrow the Chavez government. It is a matter of public record that the U.S. funded groups who were involved in the coup of 2002 and continued to do so after the coup took place.[2]

Rather than denounce or even acknowledge U.S. destabilization efforts in Venezuela, HRW continues to complain about the non-renewal of RCTV's public broadcasting license. RCTV was one of big television networks that aided and abetted the coup. HRW objects that RCTV's involvement in the coup "was not proven in a proceeding in which RCTV had an opportunity to present a defense." It is impossible to imagine a non-farcical proceeding that would conclude otherwise, especially when coup's perpetrators thanked the private media, of which RCTV was a major part, for its help. Before the coup was reversed Vice-Admiral Ramirez Perez told a Venezuelan reporter:

"We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

Judging by it reports, HRW is completely uninterested in whether the broadcaster that replaced RCTV on the public airwaves, TVes, offers viewers a wider variety views or greater accountability. "Freedom of the Press Barons" to perpetrate coups appears to be HRW's concern, not freedom of expression.[3]

HRW also used the 2008 World Report to criticize, yet again, a judicial reform law that was passed by the Chavez administration in 2004. In contrast, HRW's summary about Haiti said nothing about the coup that ousted Jean Bertrand Aristide's democratic government in 2004; nothing about the subsequent murder of thousands of people who supported Aristide's Lavalas movement (the word "Lavalas" does not even appear in the summary); nothing about the fact that Haiti's police and judiciary remain stacked with appointees from the dictatorship of 2004-2006; nothing about Father Gerard Jean Juste, the most prominent political prisoner of that period, who continues to be hounded Haiti's legal system.[4]

Even if HRW's criticism of Venezuela's judicial reform law of 2004 were reasonable (and it isn't) it cannot deserve more attention than the coup that took place in Haiti and that led to a human rightscatastrophe.[5]

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